


Love and Glass

by KaeStela



Category: Starbound (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Romance, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:17:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22714465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaeStela/pseuds/KaeStela
Summary: Sidestory in the world of As Long as We Remember; in which Lumen ponders grief, cider, and a hand that used to rest in his. And the two that found him.
Relationships: OCs - Relationship
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Love and Glass

Left, right, left, round and round. Try not to imagine the click of metal and glass too hard—oh. He always failed that part. Lumen huffed softly, the sigh of cooling iron, and watched the cider swirl in his mug again. Sometimes ceramic sounded just different enough. Sometimes, sometimes not.

Sometimes all he could hear was the faint chink of that rainbow-glass hand and its owner’s laughter.

He drank cider just once a year, these days. It was ritual now. He sometimes hoped, like most rituals, it’d lose its meaning in the ceremony. But Dyme had never been one for fancy things, so Lumen kept it simple, just for him. Maybe that made it harder. Dyme had never really been the one to pick the easy way either, now had he?

Lumen sighed again and looked up at the ceiling. Sixty-one years—no, sixty-two now. Still ached, it did. “Now why’d we go and do a darn silly thing like inventin’ hurtin’?” he asked no one in particular and all his ancestors back to the first. “Seems a right ol’ shame. More sand than sense.”

His constant radio-drone rattled into a low and gentle chuckle as he let go of his spoon and cupped both hands around the mug. “He was too, eh? Well we both shoulda known better, I s’pose. Sure said so long enough, by gosh we tried.”

Didn’t need the harmonica’s soft songs tonight, his voice caught it just the same. “Sure tried them months along, and years, then golly where’s the time went—” He broke into a short chuckle again—“ _Have I been lovin’ ya all this time?_ Haha, that sure is what ya said to me, m’dear Blue. Sure is…”

He lifted the mug and took a long sip, then set it down again and started stirring. Somewhere down the line, the nicknames stopped being close, started being ways to keep at arm’s length back. Now when had that happened? Lumen found his free hand resting on his shoulder again, feeling through the thin flannel and tracing the old faint scars. He put it down again on the table. Hard enough without remembering all the deepness, it was.

The ceiling looked back down at him again, unchanging, unfeeling. _Might be nice to be a ceiling,_ Lumen thought. _Keep the rain off folks. Not much thinkin’ to do, either._ Dyme had laughed himself silly when Lumen said that to him, once. He’d been mighty whimsical that day. Was it two, three years in? Same day he brought those fine shed antlers in. Dyme thought them delightful, turned them into an almost-chandelier.

 _Hard to have a chandelier without light,_ Lumen told him.

 _We’ve got us two_ , Dyme replied. _Who needs lights?_ And hung the chandelier all through with cast-off crystal until the whole shack gleamed.

He’d laughed too, with Lumen staring up at the thing. _Never seen nice lights before?_ he’d teased. Always teased, drove Lumen mad sometimes. He always found new ways for Dyme to tease him.

Now what had he said back then? _Sure I have—_ that’s right— _but not like this. How’d ya do it?_

Lumen reached up, just like his memory, almost touched the glimmering crystal and its trapped lights. His laugh was so close to Dyme’s echo. “ _Well all it takes is a lick and a promise,_ ” he murmured, same as Dyme had said, and the dream dissolved. “Ain’t that right? Ain’t that all love is too, eh? A lick and a promise.”

He raised his hand to his face and started stirring again. It’d get cold at this rate. It tended to. Did every year. The sigh was more of a creak than anything, weary, worn-out hinges now. “Now why’d I have to do a darn fool thing like have a heart for a brand?”

Lumen stirred away and tried to remember how much he’d loved the taste of apples once and how much he still did. And he tried very hard not to imagine blue sitting across from him, matching mug in hand. Tried so hard he almost didn’t hear the feet on the ladder, a click-click-click that wasn’t metal on glass.

He looked up. The spoon stopped. Click-click- _click—_

The spoon spun high, a little silver arc, lit by Lumen’s bright-flared glow. Hissing floran laughter mixed with Lumen’s whistled surprise.

The carpet was thick and soft and so _different_ from their old wood floored shack.

“What in the gol- _dang_ , Ferny?” he asked as soon as Namina let him sit up again, too bewildered to be angry yet. “Now why’d ya go an’ tackle me?”

Namina sat back in Lumen’s chair with the plainest surprise in his face, like it was Lumen who’d done something ridiculous. “Lights-friend was ssad,” he said. “Floran knocks ssad away.”

Lumen felt himself get hot. Maybe even mad, he wasn’t too numb to really feel it yet. Maybe Namina noticed; his grin got nervous. Scared. Orange nova anger, too much like fire.

“Namina! Oh—I’m so sorry, Lumen, he ran on ahead.” Oldarva’s panting voice cut through the rising fury-hiss. She clambered down the ladder, gripping with hands and feet, a bundle tucked safe under one arm. “I told him to wait… Are you alright?”

“Fine.” Lumen sat up and stood up and fixed his vest. “I’ll be much obliged if the pair of ya leave me be, though.” Some back part of his mind recalled Dyme’s wildest laughter; he shoved it away. He didn’t want to remember that.

“Yes.” Poor Eldie, she always wilted when anyone got sharp with her, though she stood her ground better than she had, these days. Lumen reminded himself to be proud of her later, when he could do it right.

Then he saw what she had in her hands. That little glint of rainbow glass peeking through a shawl. Eldie followed his stare and held it out to him. Lumen took the bundle and nudged the thick cloth aside. She’d wrapped it well to keep it safe. That didn’t click yet. “Ya went through my things.”

“It was on your bed,” she whispered. “You left it out.” Was she apologetic, or defiant? There was a note in her voice he’d heard before, but he had never named it. “It felt right. You needed this today.”

Lumen cradled the old prosthetic hand between his glowing orange hands, watching and remembering how his warm glow lit it just right. Not just right—should have been blue inside it. Should have been Dyme’s. But there hadn’t been blue in a long, long time. The anger faded. Just the warm remained, and the old, old memory. Memory, and something more.

“Namina told me you’ve been… not yourself, this week,” Oldarva said softly. She handed him the shawl, in case he wanted to wrap the glass again. Lumen knew that cloth, the smell, the flowers down the side. It was one he’d bought for her. The one that matched her favorite comb. She’d cried when she got it, he remembered, stayed up with him and Namina all night. Sewed, and sewed, and sewed.

Namina was wearing its match, he realized, one of the pair they’d made together then. Lumen shifted Oldarva’s shawl and realized there were two. His too.

It rolled over him in a slow and quiet dawning. Eldie was right. He needed—not quite. He looked at her hand against his, at Namina’s as the Floran joined them and put a very hesitant claw over Lumen’s arm.

Dyme would’ve liked them. Dyme would’ve liked them very much.

He liked anything that made Lumen happy.

When had the nicknames stopped keeping the love away?

Lumen set the glass hand on the table beside his mug and took their hands in his. Unwound the shawls and put his on, tucked Eldie’s gently around her neck. “Sit yerselves down,” he said softly, with a quick squeeze as if that could press the warmth, confusion, lick-and-a-promise from him to them. “I’ll get ya a drink.”

He wasn’t quite sure he imagined the blue and merry gleam as he poured fresh cider for three.


End file.
